The Beast: Hardcore Sacrifices To Accomplish Home Ownership

My husband and I got married last year, and it’s been amazing. I’ve always heard that the first year of marriage is the hardest, but my experience has been anything but that. In fact, I’m having a much easier time being married than I did being single.

Like I’ve mentioned before, we really hate our apartment and have vowed to do whatever it takes to move to a house as soon as the lease is up. However, buying a house in our state is more complicated than in other states and involves more up front expenses. Therefore, we’ve been cutting expenses to the extreme several months in advance so that we can save up enough to make it work.

I love cooking. When I was single and during our engagement, I spared little expense to put together Food Network-worthy meals whenever possible. One of the major sacrifices for me is buying simple food that’s much cheaper. I also used to buy higher quality wine. Now, I buy the cheapest Franzia and envision my future house while I drink it.

Going out is another thing that’s been pretty much axed from the budget. We very rarely go out for meals, go to movies, or drink at bars because a night of fun isn’t worth being $100 short of our home ownership goal. Plus, we have tons of fun hanging out at home and binge-watching Netflix and Hulu (and we hate crowds anyway).

Of all these sacrifices, my husband is making the biggest one of all. We both like craft beer, but it’s expensive so he’s been drinking cheaper beer. I knew how serious it was when he came home one day with a case of…Milwaukee’s Best Ice. 😖 Yep, he’s even willing to drink The Beast in order to make sure we get our house. Now that’s devotion.

Now, I drank a lot of cheap beer in college…but that was college and I’m not a trust fund kid so it’s to be expected. In my college days, Natural Light was “average beer” and Bud Light was “good beer.” 😂 The Beast was still The Beast, even then.

Hopefully by this time next year, we’ll be enjoying the American Dream of home ownership, and hopefully no one will have to resort to drinking The Beast. We’ve both been out of college too long for that.